The coach wanted to express his anger. He had every right to do so over a curfew broken by his players not long after a loss that left the coach annoyed. Kelvin Jefferson just couldn't do it.

Russ Smith has affected people in that manner for much of his life. The Louisville junior guard doesn't seek trouble so much as he finds harmless mischief because of a simple inability to resist, well, life.

"We're in Maine playing two games and we lose the first one Friday," said Jefferson, the head coach at South Kent School, where he coached Smith for the 2009-10 season. "We get to the hotel and I say, 'Guys, you have a curfew. Everybody in your rooms. I don't want to see you until breakfast.'

"Later, the coaches do their usual sweep through the hotel and I hear karaoke from the lobby. Who's on stage but Russ singing, with his teammates doing backup for him. That's him. You just can't even get mad at him."

Smith released a hearty laugh when reminded of the story.

"The song may have been 'Cloud Nine' by The Temptations," Smith said. "I was definitely the ring leader. Coach Jefferson wanted to choke us. You could see that in his face, but he has a good way of playing stuff off with a smile. It was pretty funny right then, but after the fact he was 100 percent serious.

"I acted like a little kid up in South Kent. I had a lot of fun at that place."

Smith was yet another in the long line of New York guards considered undersized and a bit too undisciplined. It was obvious that he was a scoring machine in high school, but at 6-foot-1 he had no point guard tendencies. He wanted to put the ball in the hoop and that was the extent of it.

As a result, he was only lightly recruited by mid-major schools and headed to South Kent in an attempt to maybe become a point guard (that didn't work) and garner some recognition (that worked). Former Louisville assistant coaches Steve Masiello and Ralph Willard headed to South Kent during Smith's one season there to look at J.J. Moore, who now plays at Pittsburgh.

Masiello, who had long known Smith's father, figured Smith wasn't right for the Cardinals. Willard loved Smith. He saw him as clay that needed molding and somehow convinced coach Rick Pitino to sign Smith. At Louisville, Smith proceeded to do what he often did at South Kent.

"During games, he would black out," Jefferson said. "He would just see nothing except the basket no matter how many guys were in front of him. He was going to find a way to get to that basket. He would only see the rim. We tried to get him to be more of a point guard but that was an exercise in futility.

"He's just wired differently. He was one of those 'no, no, no until it goes in the basket' kind of players for me. He's a tremendously good kid but I attribute a lot of these gray hairs to Russ."

Sometimes maddened by Smith's questionable decisions but needing his scoring ability, Pitino dubbed Smith "Russdiculous." Smith has become a cult hero in Louisville, a Twitter and Instagram star, and Pitino has become so fond of him that he named one of his horses "Russdiculous."

Smith is his own sort of show. He and the third-ranked Cardinals bring that show to the XL Center on Monday night to play UConn. Deep into his career, Smith still does some things that confound his coach, but he is much more a player than a scorer now.

He started the weekend third in the Big East at 19.4 points per game. His game has changed subtly in ways that aren't seen on statistical sheets. He doesn't go full-speed all the time any more. He doesn't take as many difficult shots (they'll always be a part of his repertoire). Most surprisingly to Jefferson, he plays defense.

"Coach Jefferson got me to realize I had to make the right play," Smith said. "That's what I learned there. It still has taken me a while to understand that philosophy, but I see what he was trying to do. I'm seeing what I have, looking at the floor a little better, trying to pick up assists and not look bad. I feel like that's one of the biggest improvements I've made."

Smith has progressed so much that Pitino has called him one of the premier guards in the country and it's hard to argue that. The process isn't always pretty but the results are obvious. He's a more amped-up version of UConn's Shabazz Napier, a player whose bad must be accepted to reap the benefits of the good.

Having an enigmatic personality helps. Jefferson described Smith as a "big fish in a small pond" at South Kent. Smith said his best relationships were with Moore and Nick Stauskas, now at Michigan, but he struck up strong bonds with foreign exchange students who might not have known much, if anything, about basketball.

It is not at all surprising that Smith has developed hero status in Louisville. Combine a unique personality with a unique and winning basketball ability and the fame is bound to come.

"I just have this personality that people seem to like," Smith said. "They liked it at South Kent and they like it in Louisville. I've always been like this, but now I'm getting attention for it. I've just been this outgoing person who wants to have fun.

"I never had national recognition. I wasn't a McDonald's All-American. Not too many people recruited me in high school. Now I'm getting publicity and it just so happens I have this weird personality that people tend to like. It's a lot of fun."

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